SATYAMEVA JAYATE

"So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked." - - - Mark Twain

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Today winamp suddenly played a memorable song. It was the slower version of the title song of 'Dil Chahta Hai'. I usually associate songs with the times when the film was released and how life was then. I had seen this film with my entire class in a local theatre while in the third semester of engineering. I was late for the show and the film had already started. People were rocking to the tunes of 'Koi kahe' when I entered the pitch dark of Meghraj. I was stepping over toes and and fumbling to find my seat and even now I can distinctly remember the comfort I had from the fact that shuld any one from the audience beat me up, it wuld probably be a member of my class!

We were just out of hell (freshmen year) and had got our first real 15 day vacation. Fresh and eager to get out of the academic world, we were filled with the contagious enthusiasm that is the hallmark of a second year Engineering student. It was a time when u get to know ur seniors and work with them. U start taking part in extracuriculars, which as mentioned above not only introduces u to seniors but also lets u bunk classes and get attendence for doing it!Academically it was the easiest sem I remember, practicals were light and I had a great programming partner. College wuld usually end at 2pm for comp 3, needless to say we were the envy of our counterparts. I wuld usually go to the basket ball court behind college and play for a while with my fellow class mates and although I never learnt more than 'how to pass the ball', it was great fun none the less. When not playing I wuld sit on the stair like benches (built by some poor work shop students mind you! ) and chat with friends.............. chat abut movies, who is having a crush on whom, who got caught while giving a plagiarized demo, everything and nothing at all and enjoy the wind. It was the most relaxing part of my day.

The world was a very simple place................. there were no career issues in mind, there was no stress and there was no worry. It was the time when I happily kept an empty mind (not a devils work shop!). It allowed friendships to cement and rendered a health that I wuld dearly need to go through the rest of my under graduate career.

Now as life becomes progressively worse, its a memory that acts as my oasis. Bored by debugging an impossible program I sit quietly for a while and make a mental escapade onto the basketball court and hear the ordered chaos of the game, shoes squeaking, the thump of the ball, I almost live it again. And it never fails to give me the strength to fight the damn bug once more.

Afterall as Bryan Adams wuld have said ... "Those were the best days of my life! "